People with experience in the hiring of employees, whether as a small business owner or as a personnel manager for a large corporation, understand the costs associated with the hiring of new employees. Aside from the interview process, background checks, completion of forms and testing, new employees usually require some degree of training. The costs associated with employee training include, for example, the obvious expense of the training itself and the lack of productivity and negative contribution to the hiring entity during the training process. Therefore, hiring managers have employed a number of interviewing methodologies to reduce bad hiring decisions (i.e. to reduce the need for, or the amount of, training needed for new hires).
However, the interview process is highly subjective and therefore susceptible to false perceptions. No matter how skilled the interviewer, there are candidates who are equally skilled in convincingly overstating credentials such as, for example, skills, education, experience and abilities. Generally, a candidate's overstated credentials will not become apparent until well after the training process and the associated costs have been incurred. This is especially prominent and problematic in the Information Technology (IT) industry.
The IT industry is unique in that a single project may employ a number of very specialized experts working in tandem toward a project's successful completion. In many instances, a project's success or failure can hinge on the failure of a single team member. Therefore, the Project Manager's primary concern is usually to assign the right combination of labor resources to a project, which often requires a thorough understanding of the needed technologies. Since the IT employment market has diminished significantly over the past several years, competition for available IT jobs has increased. It is often difficult for the hiring manager to discern a true technology expert from a novice who is well read and knows how to speak with extensive knowledge about given technologies.
Therefore, a need exists for a system and method for assessing the skills and knowledge of prospective employees and/or contractors. More specifically, hiring managers need a tool to test and score a prospect's abilities relative to the specifics of the work the prospect will be expected to perform if hired. Moreover, a need exists for a tool that will provide a non-subjective assessment of a prospect's ability to perform at the quality and efficiency levels typically required for successful completion of projects and assignments.